HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (4 page)

Chapter 5

A GATHERING OF
THE PEOPLE

Angelique strode
confidently into the village proper, the panther she had named
Sokuru, at her side. People came from their huts and dropped
whatever they were doing to stare. No one moved a muscle, fearing
the panther might leap. Even the children were silent and kept
still.

“
I am
Angelique and this is my friend, Sokuru. If you obey me, I will not
have him kill you. If you run or you hide or you disobey, you will
die. Do you understand?”

The village elder,
the tribe’s leader, stepped forward, trying to appear unafraid.
He held his spear at his side, its tip in the dirt. “Are you
not the daughter of Lenosa? The girl she gave to the witch doctor?
Is your name not Kera?”

“
I am the
daughter of Lenosa, but I am emancipated. I no longer belong to my
mother or the witch doctor. He is dead because he tried to do me
harm. My new name is Angelique and that is what you will call me
when you speak to your queen.”

The elder turned his
head to the side. “Queen?”

“
You dispute
me?” She took her hand from Sokuru’s back and gestured
for him to move forward. He went into a crouch, the way a big cat
will do when it is ready to take down prey.

The elder stepped
back and immediately dropped his spear, in essence giving up his
title as leader. He brought his hands together before him and bowed
his head. “My queen,” he said.

Angelique walked
forward and again put her hand on the panther’s back. He
stopped, straightening, awaiting command.

“
I want a
runner to go to all the tribes, island wide, and invite them to this
place. There will no more be separate villages and groups. We will
all be as one. And I am the queen of all. Obey me.” She
glanced around at all who had gathered before her. “All of
you.”

The elder motioned
to their fastest runner and gestured for him to go. He immediately
set off into the woods to disappear into the thick jungle to summon
the tribes.

Angelique smiled
now. Had she not tamed the panther and made him her vassal, this
would have been vastly more difficult. She patted the head of the
big cat.

“
Now call for
my mother and tell her I will need a maid servant and she will be
that maid servant. I also require a hut.”

After dispatching
another runner to collect the child’s mother, the elder went to
his own hut, which was the largest in the village, and swept open the
grass door. “This is yours,” he said. “Please. I
can build another.”

She liked the elder
and when she passed him by on the way into his hut, she tapped his
arm. “I make you my chief food gatherer and advisor. Sokuru
and I require large quantities of fresh food, preferably meat and
seafood. Be sure to keep us well supplied and your fate is secure.”

She entered the
darkened hut, the panther strolling behind her. She closed the grass
door and sat down on a cushioned bed of palm fronds. It had been a
long night and she needed sleep, but not yet.

Sokuru paced before
the door, back and forth, until she told him to lie down and rest.
“Only if I am in danger,” she instructed the cat, “do
you attack.”

The cat came to her
and purred as he rubbed his fat cheek against her much smaller cheek.
Then he moved like the majestic beast he was toward the back of the
dwelling and circled twice before he lay down for a much-needed nap.

There was a small
tapping outside the door and Sokuru raised his head.

“
Come,”
Angelique said. She motioned with her hand for Sokuru to relax.

Angelique’s
mother, Lenosa, entered. She rushed to her daughter without noticing
there was a beastly presence in the room. When she went to embrace
the girl, Angelique pushed her away. “Don’t ever touch
me.”

Shocked and hurt,
Lenosa said, “But Kera…”

“
Never call me
that again, I told you! Kera is dead. I am Angelique and you will
address me as you would your queen, for I am your master now and not
your child any longer.”

“
No entiendo.”
Tears stood in Lenosa’s eyes.

“
Listen to me,
you dumb pig woman. Your Kera died. You had her raised up, which
was a selfish thing for you to do, and a thing for which you will
later be punished. And then you gave me, not Kera, me, to the
witless soul who did this thing. Kera drifted into the dark and did
not return, do you understand that? I am Angelique and I am not like
your Kera, nor am I like you or anyone on this forsaken island. I
will live forever, but because that witless Mujai brought back a
child, I will remain a child forever, too. I am doomed to this
little body because of you and I ought to have your head on a spike,
but if you prove yourself useful, I’ll let you live.”

Lenosa listened to
this blasphemy with wide eyes. It was evident she would not say “no
entiendo” again, no matter how confused she might be.

“
I will serve
you,” she said, bowing her head with grave misgiving and a
sharp pain in her heart where she had carried her daughter, Kera, for
ten years.

“
Yes, that’s
right. Trust me when I say Kera is dead and gone. I see you
understand. You and Mujai carried out an unholy act. He paid for it
this past night when I took his life. I would not hesitate a minute
to take yours.”

“
Could
you…could you tell me where you came from?”

Angelique cocked her
head and raised her eyebrows. She smiled and it chilled Lenosa’s
heart. “I like a curious spirit. But if I told you you would
not believe me. Suffice it to say I am not ten years old, but ten
thousand times ten thousand. It has been a thousand years since
anyone was able to raise the dead so that I could return to this
world. I find it…” She glanced around the bare hut and
the palm leaf walls. “I find it nearly unbearable. You are a
barbaric people. Nevertheless here I am. And here this is. And that
is that. Now fetch clean water and come wash me, I am dirty.”

As Lenosa bowed her
way backward out the hut door, Angelique sank back onto the palm
mattress. She didn’t know why she had told the woman so much.
She had the very human need to confide in someone and Lenosa was as
good as another. She probably didn’t understand a word of it
anyway. There was nothing in Lenosa’s life experience that
could parse such a tale and make reason out of it.

From the moment
Angelique opened her eyes and saw Mujai in the firelight of the dirty
little hut, she knew she must get away from this place. Discovering
it to be an island plunged her into deep despair. These people
didn’t even fashion boats, but fished with their hands and bark
rope nets tied to long poles, fishing from shore. They were so
primitive they still had witch doctors and hadn’t even the
skill to weave cloth to cover their nakedness. When she had walked
the Earth alive before, a thousand years in the past, Angelique
hadn’t even known this little island existed.

But Angelique had
been in dire straits before. Many times. It wasn’t as if she
couldn’t work with it.

She lifted one hand
and held it before her eyes in the shadowy light. She turned it from
palm to top, from top to palm, examining it. Her hand was so small,
so frail. She would never be a woman, never know a man, never birth
children of her own. Just because she had been given life it didn’t
mean she would grow. In fact, she would remain as she was the rest
of her days. Fully half of life’s joys were denied her. Her
physical strength was minimal. This was the cruelest curse of all,
to be trapped in a child’s body, and it had never happened
before.

On the other hand,
she could sense the nubs of thick matter in her back, at the top of
her shoulder blades and knew eventually she could make them grow,
splitting human skin as easily as air parting leaves in a tree. The
nubs were the buds of her wings. Her wings! She had not come into
this body completely without resource.

And at least the
vessel was female. Not just female, but superbly beautiful. She had
some advantages, she admitted. Some advantage is all she would ever
need.

CHAPTER 6

THE COMING OF THE
SPANIARDS

Angelique had ruled
the island for two hundred years and was so weary and bored that she
instituted human sacrifice into the culture to spice things up. Each
season of the year she had the people choose a victim by lottery. A
large flat stone jutting out over the sea was used as a sacrificial
altar and in a grand sweep of a hand-made axe, the victim’s
head was separated from his body, both thrown afterward into the
surging sea below the rocky cliff.

Sacrifice did
nothing for Angelique; was not amusing or interesting in any way.
What it did was instill in the people a fear that she needed kept at
fever pitch. At first they feared her control of the panther,
Kokuru. When he died of old age, toothless and clawless, they then
feared her because she had not aged. She remained the same
ten-year-old child she had come back into after death. That was
enough to keep her power over the superstitious native aborigines for
long years more.

“
Our little
queen,” they whispered. “Surely she came to us from the
gods to remain so young and to never grow old.”

Then there were a
few attempted coups and attempts on her life. The funny thing about
power is that someone always wants to take it away from you. The
funny thing about fear is that it wanes, grows cold and transforms
into anger and a thirst for revenge unless the ante is upped.

Angelique
side-stepped the assassination attempts easily enough. She could
read the eyes of the plotters, she could sense the presence of
someone who meant to do her harm. Though she had those traitors to
their queen summarily executed, publicly torn limb from limb, she
knew she needed something else to keep the kingdom on an even keel.

Everything changed
the day the tribe had decided was the winter season start, either
October or November, 1493, she was later to determine, when a young
man had been chosen for sacrifice. He was led to his death place
willingly, his hands tied behind his back with leather thongs for
precaution. Some of them, at the last moment, changed their minds and
screamed for mercy and tried to run away. The honor waned at the
prospect of death.

An axe, made with a
large piece of sharpened shale stone wedged into a length of polished
hardwood, lay on the stone awaiting him. He was placed on the stone
on his stomach. He turned his head and looked at Angelique who stood
close by. She could see the fear in his eyes. She blinked, feeling
nothing.

She turned from him,
bored, and looked to sea. She was the first to spy the ships on the
horizon sailing toward the island. She made an audible intake of
breath. The victim, noting her alarm, lifted his head and stared out
to the sea, too.

The young man lying
on the altar began babbling like a mad man. In the two hundred years
Angelique had been stuck on the island not one soul had come. Now
was her chance to escape! Her heart raced, blood rose to her face,
and she stepped back from the precipice.

She didn’t
care about the sacrifice anymore; she didn’t care about the
people or their fate. The ships were coming!

She must hide out
before they arrived. The people

would tell the
strangers about her, their queen, their long living, never aging
child queen, but they would never find her. She could not take the
chance the strangers on the ships might be murderous, and of course
they would be superstitious, thinking her a demon if they believed
she did not age. Regardless, the person in a position of power on
this island would be the first to die. Chop off the head of the
serpent, the serpent dies.

She must not let the
strangers know of her. Not yet…

She rushed down the
hillside away from the jutting stone and the gathered people. Some
cried for her to come back. “Save us, save us!” they
cried. Some saw the ships and crowded toward the cliff’s edge
to watch, curious about what a ship meant and who the strangers might
be.

Angelique sped down
the hillside, through the empty village, and plunged into the jungle,
taking nothing with her. She knew of a good place, a safe place.
After lifetimes spent on the island she had walked, at one time or
another, every inch of the landmass, from seashore to seashore.

This place she knew
was not far distant. It was a natural cavern high up a mountain,
camouflaged by the thick over growths of vegetation that grew there.
She had found it by accident on one of her ramblings and made a
mental note, knowing one day she might need a hiding place and this
one was perfect. Hard to reach. Hidden. Unknown by the natives.